the steel is warm against namjoon’s cheek as he flattens himself to the dirt floor and presses the shell of his ear to slightly dewy train track. the metal edges that push up against his jaw and earrings are uncomfortable, though not as much as the rain-saturated air around them that bleeds straight through his leather jacket and ripped jeans and right into his tanned skin.

but namjoon doesn’t mind, really, because all he sees is jimin’s crescent smile mirroring his slow dimpled one.

“guess how long we’ve got,” the other boy whispers, black bangs fanning into round eyes and defined nose, his piano fingers flirting at the straight surface that connects them.

namjoon hums and closes his eyes. “I’ll give it ten.”

jimin bets five.

in the end, both are wrong and are almost knocked over by the sheer force of momentum when the train plows by almost three minutes later, sounding its horn as it goes.

tossing his head back towards the sky, jimin laughs breathlessly, “that was close.” everything about him is in disarray.

but namjoon isn’t really listening. he’s watching jimin’s lips spread so wide across his soft features that it almost threatens to swallow the heavy clouds and stars and more, yet all he feels is jimin’s hand curled in his, from when he had pulled jimin out of the way, just in time.

he thinks back to every life before this where their paths had crossed and how every one of those times he had been too late;

of how he had been just a breath away from saving jimin the first time when he had just missed catching jimin before the ground far below ultimately did — which is probably why they got stuck in this unending mess to begin with;

of how namjoon had repeated the same promise every time that he so desperately wants to keep, yet somehow always ends up breaking it over and over again and restarting the cycle of rebirth, remembrance, and regret;

of how maybe — just maybe — because of this moment, it will finally, finally end.

maybe this will be the one time he’ll make it. or maybe it’ll be the last time when he’ll make it there on time to protect jimin before it’s too late for both of them.

it’s not enough, nowhere enough, but when just jimin’s smile is enough to save him every time, namjoon decides that he will take whatever he can get.

“yeah,” namjoon says. “that was close.”

A/N: thank you so much to the people that waited for this, since the beginning. I had submitted it to my creative writing class and made some edits

this is just a segment of a larger piece so I hope you stay tuned for the newer pieces!